Getting Started with Pyxel

Let's get out tools ready to develop Pyxel games and more!

Sébastien Boisgérault
Associate Professor, ITN Mines Paris – PSL

Quickstart

Go to https://www.pyxelstudio.net and create a new project. That’s it, you’re done!

The Hard Way

Useful if you want:

to develop Python projects other than Pyxel games,
to work locally on your computer and not depend on “the cloud”,
to benefit from a more feature-rich development environment.

Python

You can get Python from the official Python website or from conda-forge.

Visual Studio Code

Install Visual Studio Code, then
Install the Microsoft Python extension for Visual Studio Code.

(Optional) Enable Github Copilot on Github. (This is free for students registered into their Global Campus program ; alternatively, you may opt for a 30 free trial.)
Then install the GitHub Copilot extension for Visual Studio Code.

Install Pyxel

Use pip to install Pyxel (there is no conda package for it).

pip install pyxel

Conda

The use of conda is very beneficial if you work on several Python projects and/or need some of the packages available on conda-forge but not on PyPi. The “conda way” is supported by several tools, for example Anaconda, Miniconda, or more recently Mamba & Micromamba and Pixi.

Classic conda workflow

Once and for all. Integrate conda and your shell; for example for bash:
```
conda init bash
```
then restart your terminal.
For each new project. Create a new empty conda environment
```
conda create --name my_new_project
```
Activate it
```
conda activate my_new_project
```
then install what you need from conda-forge, for example
```
conda install -c conda-forge python=3.11 pip jupyter numpy
```
then use pip if you also need packages from PyPi, for example:
```
pip install pyxel
```
Then, when you’re done working on your project for the day
```
conda deactivate
```
To resume your work.
```
conda activate my_new_project
```

Troubleshooting

Common issues that you may have with “the hard way”:

Pyxel is not found

You have installed Pyxel with pip but Visual Studio Code cannot find it? It is likely not using the same Python environment as the one you used to install Pyxel.

In your terminal, type:
```
python -c "import sys; print(sys.executable)"
```
to know to which Python interpreter python refers to.
In Visual Studio Code, open the command palette with Ctrl+Shift+P and type Python: Select Interpreter to select this Python interpreter.
Install explicitly pyxel for this interpreter with:
```
python -m pip install pyxel
```
(your pip executable may refer to another Python interpreter.)